• 3 Posts
  • 28 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: July 12th, 2023
  • thechadwick@lemmy.worldtoMemes@lemmy.ml•When you write your academic papers in Word
    0·
    3 months ago

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    This post brought to you by the open source Zotero committee.

  • thechadwick@lemmy.worldtoAsk Lemmy@lemmy.world•What's the point of living for someone like me?
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    5 months ago

    Yeah…

    Life’s fulfillment is in many ways measured in the quality of your relationships. Frankly, if you want to make meaningful relationships, you need to be the kind of fellow you or a regular person would want to be around.

    You can’t really be a different person and you shouldn’t try. Instead you need to be the best version of yourself you can be. The one who listens well, or does nice things for others without expecting a reward. You have some positive instincts in there somewhere, but if you indulge selfishness, it will drowned out any of the positive aspects immediately.

    Don’t do this attention seeking bs. If you want help, get help. The world is full of others seeking connections and you’ll break the hearts of family if you take the way way out. Maybe that’s what you want? Have an impact just by inflicting harm? I hope not, that’s what bad people do.

    Get into bird watching or any other hobby. There’s tons of poor, interesting, people with deeply filling lives out there. You’re not uniquely suffering I’m afraid. Just pittying yourself.

  • thechadwick@lemmy.worldtoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•Why do people say "Catholics and Christians" when Catholics are also Christians, as if they refer to it as a different religion.
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    7 months ago

    There’s plenty of great commentary here about why Christianity is divided up into different sects, but I think you’re primarily interested in the narcissism of small differences. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism_of_small_differences)

    Basically, if you’ve read about Dr. Suess’ Starbellied Sneeches, you get the idea. Human brains are exceptional pattern recognition machines, and when a society is so homogenously Christian then those small differences become the cleavages along which identities form. That leads to things like Catholic / Christian divisions and the formation of the best joke in The Guardian history:

    Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, “Don’t do it!” He said, “Nobody loves me.” I said, “God loves you. Do you believe in God?”

    He said, “Yes.” I said, “Are you a Christian or a Jew?” He said, “A Christian.” I said, “Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?” He said, “Protestant.” I said, “Me, too! What franchise?” He said, “Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?” He said, “Northern Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?”

    He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?” He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region.” I said, “Me, too!”

    Northern Conservative†Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?" He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912.” I said, “Die, heretic!” And I pushed him over.

    https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2005/sep/29/comedy.religion

  • thechadwick@lemmy.worldtoNews@lemmy.world•US Army is slashing thousands of posts in major revamp to prepare for future wars
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    9 months ago

    This is not accurate. It’s a provacative narrative, but the heyday for private military contractors passed a decade ago. Blackwater was such a disaster for the military, they relegated 99% of contractor jobs to BDOC/BOSI (tower guards etc) roles ages ago.

    This move is almost certainly related to transitions from limited counterterrorism structures to great power conflict Army force design. The military has missed it’s recruitment goals by massive numbers in the past couple years, and filling obsolete positions is actually impacting Forces Command from meeting their manning strength mandates.

    I fully expect to see more of these changes announced over the next 3-5 years as military procurement and restructuring guidelines catch up with implementation timelines. But this is categorically not evidence of a large scale plan to turn active soldiers into PMC personnel (to work around rules of engagement restrictions). There’s manpower shortages as it is, and there’s no institutional incentive to make those shortages more drastic than they already are.